Swedish Cameo tiara....is it possible...Archived Message
Posted by Tamara on December 15, 2011, 11:22 am
As I was watching for the 4th time the lovely documentary about Royal Jewels..something jumped at me when I saw larger portrait of Queen Josephine in the Cameo tiara...As detailed as that portrait is, from cameos to the amount of pearls shows, it is intricately detailed portrait...and as much as I do not like to have discussion of jewls based on portraits, we can safely compare this portrait to Cameo tiara that exists today.
So, here is what I found..
The elements between cameos have the most discrepancies I found...the top element in between cameos is surrounded with pearls (as arches) in Queen Josephine's portrait, but in today's version of the tiara, we only see gold arches.
as we look down the same side part of the tiara, clearly one leaf with pearls is missing in the painting on each side.
and on the bottom, we are missing pearls on each side, between two petals...(in the painting)
Even the elements right under the tiara don't look exact...and assuming that painter didn't follow the exact shape of 7 spray elements, he repeated on the painting the same design under each cameo, which give me a hint that that was in fact the way the element was designed.
Now my question is, if in fact tiara was modified, which I am sure it had to be at some point, what what the reasoning in changing pearls with gold elements or removing some and adding just few? OR is it possible that the FRAME of the tiara was redesigned and the same Cameos were attached to the new one?
I hope I am not opening pandora's box...but there just too many details in this tiara that doesn't add up. Curious to hear what other think